If you watch Philip Rosedale’s presentation at TED*, he talks about his first idea of making his bedroom door open upwards through the ceiling, instead of conventionally swinging on hinges. Not many think like this and not many then persuade their parents it’s a good idea! But how did his ideas move from ‘doors’ to ‘computing’…!? In short he was an ‘explorer of ideas’ and turned his head towards…

… exploring BASIC programming, on his early Apple 2E computer, in his early teens. He also thought there must be a way to do BASIC programming more quickly and discovered ‘Assembly language’ on his Apple PC. Then…… with this knowledge, he built a database which he decided had some commercial value. He was 16 years old at the time and realised that car dealerships had thirty minutes of paperwork at point of sale with ‘all sorts of forms and calculations’ needed. That’s when he developed an application and database that could manage this process. He then knocked on car dealership doors and started pitching his idea to remove the pain of this paperwork.

This business made him money that took him through college and which led him to San Francisco. From there he moved on to bigger things and which led to Second Life.

To learn more on his story watch this video with Philip Rosedale being interviewed by Kevin Rose (of Digg, Google Ventures…).